Ottoman Expansion

Ottoman Expansion took place from 1512 to 1639, when the Ottoman Empire reached its greatest extent. From their base at Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), the Ottoman Turks pushed westwards, extending their influence by both land and sea. Though the Christian powers won significant victories, the Islamic forces were relentless. Not until the end of the 17th century would their advance be stayed.

Background
For centuries Constantinople had been regarded as the greatest city in the world. That it had fallen to the Ottomans sent shockwaves through Christendom.

Eastern Hostility
A string of hostile tribes had already emerged from the Central Asian steppe to threaten the West: the Huns, the Seljuks, the Mongols, and the hordes of Timur.

Empire's End
The Ottomans had seized territory in the eastern Balkans as early as the 14th century, when Sultan Murad I's forces had defeated the Serbs at the battle of Kosovo in 1389. They had also brought the Byzantine Empire to its end in 1453 with the capture of Constantinople.

Ottoman Expansion
The fall of Constantinople in 1453 brought the suspense of centuries to an end. But the West was now in the front line - and the Ottomans had shown their strength in the most ominous way; suddenly, they were a real and pressing threat.

The Ottoman Turks were a terrifying enemy. They had hundreds of thousands of warriors under arms - conscripts and mercenaries around a core of janissaries (elite troops). Recruitment fell to district officials, ensuring access to the whole population (more than 13 million) of an Islamic empire that occupied some 1,500,000 square kilometers (580,000 square miles). Town by town, soldiers were mobilized to correspond with quotas; so too were the engineers and labourers needed to construct bridges and dig trenches.

The Janissaries were the nucleus of the Sultan's army - not just a reliable elite but literally at the physical centre of his military operations. Conscripts provided a "cushion" at the fore, while at the rear came the tougher, more seasoned troops with their commander. Eventually, this idea was taken to such lengths that trenches were excavated and barriers erected at the heart of the army in the field. The Mogul prince, Babur, followed this example at Panipat in 1526. Big guns were placed there too, and were to feature increasingly in Turkish tactics. Mounted archers, or sipahis, acted as personal guards to the sultan. The akindshi, a small group of cavalry, went before the principal army as scouts and raiders - pillaging, burning, and spreading panic.

A magnificent victory
The army demonstrated their might at Mohacs in Hungary on 29 August 1526. Suleiman I ("the Magnificent") had a much bigger military force than that of the Hungarians led by Louis II, the Jafiellonian king. The Ottomans had at least 70,000 troops with 200 cannon, while Louis had fewer than half that number of men with about 80 guns. The advantage was testimony to the organizational powers and logistical capacities of the Ottoman Turks, and helps explain their victory.

Suleiman's forces were also highly disciplined. Caught descending a steep escarpment above the river Danube, the army had to break into smaller groups as they came down. The Hungarians had hoped to apprehend these units as they reached the bottom, and - up to a point at least - the idea worked. But Louis' soldiers started plundering the dead, allowing the Janissaries to reach level ground and form up with their cannon. Up to half the Hungarian army lost their lives. The Ottomans went on to besiege Vienna in 1529. Far from home after months of campaigning and at their logistical limits, the Ottomans attacked the city but were relatively easily repelled. The Austrians gave Suleiman the Magnificent his first defeat. However, the siege had been a rude awakening for the West.

One of the most striking aspects of the Ottomans' rise was their readiness to adapt. The high seas could hardly have seemed further from the Central Asian steppe, but they took to seafaring as though it were in their blood. Building one of the great navies of the early-modern era, they delivered a series of checks to Portugal's colonial ambitions in the Indian Ocean in the 16th century.

Fighting Back
In the 17th century the Ottomans extended their territories across North Africa. Freelance pirates, the Barbary pirates (named for the Barbary coast in North Africa), became an essential arm of Ottoman naval policy, harassing Christian shipping and raiding in the Mediterranean and beyond (In 1631 they snatched 111 people in a slave-raid on the villiage of Baltimore in Ireland's County Cork).

There were setbacks though: in 1565 the Ottoman army were thwarted at the siege of Malta; six years later saw the defeat at Lepanto. But - testimony again to their organizational abilities - they quickly regrouped and returned to the offensive, occupying Crete in 1669.

By 1683 they were again advancing on Vienna, which they subjected to a 59-day siege. This time, Europe's Christian powers managed to co-operate. Together with the Pope, Austria, Bavaria, Saxony, and Poland-Lithuania formed a "Holy League", raising a massive army that was more than 80,000 strong. John III Sobieski, King of Poland-Lithuania, led the decisive cavalry charge down the hillside - said to have been the biggest in history, with 20,000 horses. The Ottomans broke and fled.

The Holy League followed through with a series of victories in Hungary. In 1697, a it inflicted an ultimately decisive defeat of the Ottomans at Zenta.

Aftermath
All that was left for the Ottoman empire after its failure at the battle of Zenta was decline - but it was to be slow, and for a long time imperceptible.

Power Shift
The Ottoman empire remained the greatest power in the eastern Mediterranean; its wider sphere of influence extended from Morocco to the Middle East. Already, though, the Portuguese had gained control of the trading centres of the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.

A Weakening Hold
In Egypt and Algeria, local governors, or beys, began asserting ever more autonomy without quite breaking the link with Istanbul. The sultan's authority was weakening: the janissary corps, once his greatest source of strength, were becoming so powerful that they threatened the sultan's position. They were finally disbanded amid violent resistance in 1826.

The Ottomans' military might seemed spent. Catherine II's Russia inflicted catastrophic defeats, after which the Greeks fought for their independence. The empire was seen by other leaders as the "sick man of Europe" - a phrase that pertained to its increasing loss of power - and it finally imploded in World War I.